Last week, the first event of the Irish Working Horse Association (IWHA - www.irishworkinghorseassociation.com) took place on Brookfield Farm near Nenagh at the shores of Lough Derg.
The setting was wonderful, the sun shone, and the picnic table was laden with good food and drink. So, perfect conditions to watch professional horse logger Tom Nixon and daughter Holly at work with their stallion Prince.
The job consisted of extracting felled trees from a 16 year old mixed forest which had been due it's first thinning. The logs were long but thin and easy to handle, and Prince was able to pull them by the bundle, so that they could, once on the road, be loaded onto a trailer which Prince then moved to a field where the logs will dry out, to be cut up for firewood later.
Amongst many of the IWHA members, a number of neighbours and other interested people came along, and it was great to see that the interest is there for this mode of forest work.

Our plan to feed the animals with our home grown sugar beet through winter so far works really well...only that we didn't plant enough! The horses, sheep and pigs love it, including the greens. It takes a bit of time to scrub the beet clean, and on a cold day it's not a pleasant job and leaves my fingers bright red and freezing cold, but hearing the animals crunching away happily makes up for that!
And it's actually fun to chop the beet in our pulper which works very well. It took a long time to track one down which could be repared and then get it repared - too long for last season, because it was spring last year by the time I had it back from the welders. But ever since it had been waiting, and now is in use every evening.
Of course, Winnie has worked out that I put the beet into it in the morning, ready to be chopped later, and she tries ever so hard to stretch to reach over to get an early snack...can you see her nose in the photo?